ABSTRACT
Over the past forty years, the field of digital signal processing (DSP) has grown from its origins as a collection of techniques for simulating the behavior of analog systems on digital computers into one of the most widely studied and universally used tools in modern technology. The use of DSP algorithms and implementations has become the rule rather than the exception, with applications in many areas such as music, communications, radar, sonar, image processing, robotics, seismology, meteorology, and applied physics. The remarkable growth of this discipline is largely due to two factors. First, DSP is a powerful problem-solving tool because it exploits the theoretical insights of discrete system theory to describe, analyze, and implement many interesting linear and nonlinear algorithms. Second, and more important, there is a special relationship between VLSI technology and DSP applications. The rapid development of digital integrated circuit technology has continually reduced the cost and increased the speed of the arithmetic operations necessary for DSP applications. In addition, DSP algorithms, which have demanding computational requirements but usually a very regular structure, are very well matched to the capabilities of VLSI. Integrated circuits are making complex DSP applications possible, and DSP applications have become a major motivating factor for building fast, complex integrated circuits. Perhaps the most visible embodiments of this phenomenon are the families of DSP microprocessors commonly called DSP chips. These chips have already had an immense impact on technology and are currently in the process of revolutionizing much of our industrial and technological base.
